Spring break sanitizer switch

Hand sanitizer throughout the district will be switched over spring break from an alcohol-based product to one that is alcohol-free.

Aliza Porter

Hand sanitizer throughout the district will be switched over spring break from an alcohol-based product to one that is alcohol-free.

Aliza Porter, Staff Reporter

The district is replacing all alcohol-based hand sanitizer on each campus with non-alcohol hand sanitizer during spring break in order to keep students safe.

“The decision to switch to a non-alcohol-based hand sanitizer was made after an elementary student ingested alcohol-based hand sanitizer and became ill,” Frisco ISD assistant director of communications department Meghan Cone said. “The change will promote student safety, which is our top priority.”

According to the the National Poison Data System (NPDS), poison centers have managed more than 17,000 hand sanitizer exposure cases in children under 12 every year since 2011 and the switch to non-alcoholic hand sanitizer will help prevent anything happening in the district.

“The dangers of it containing alcohol is that, we just don’t want to risk any kind of possibility of it potentially being congested or anything like that mistakenly and so for that safety reason too,” Mikeska said. “For some people, alcohol may be just, it is very drying and so it’s just kind of hard on the skin sometimes too, too much alcohol.”

Replacing the more than 4,000 containers of hand sanitizer in the district will take most of spring break, but using soap and water to clean hands may be best; although some people may not be doing this right.

“You need to wash for about 24 seconds to remove the bacteria and viruses from your hands,” professor of epidemiology Allison Aiello said in a CNN article. “Most people don’t wash their hands properly. You need to cover all parts of your hands, including under your nails — and then dry your hands well.”